The Master

A little extra from Laura Dern on The Master and working with Paul Thomas Anderson:

"It’s an amazing experience. Joaquin’s such an incredible actor and Philip Seymour Hoffman was in the film, they’re doing such incredible work. I think [Paul’s] so brilliant and one of our most important visionaries ever in film."
Is your character an acolyte of this religion?Laura Dern: It’s someone who is very involved, for sure. You know what I love about Paul, I love a zillion things about Paul like so many of us do, but Paul is old school in the best sense of the word. I was raised in the ‘70s and I’ve worked with people I love and I’ve been on sets with my parents, with people who run a set and require of actors a sense of liberty and freedom and exploration and failure into brave achievement. Other than Jonathan Demme, Paul Thomas Anderson, bless and rest his soul, Robert Altman, who was such a pioneer for Paul and myself, there are very few people making movies like that, so just working on a set with him is so extraordinary. In terms of the subject of the film, and all of the films he makes, he dances so comfortably in the gray. When he takes on the subject matter, any subject matter, he is there to examine what it offers; not just take anything down. It’s funny when people think filmmakers are irreverent. It’s like, “Ooh, what’s he doing. I heard the movie’s about dot dot dot.” They go, “I bet he’s really going to attack it.” In fact, he tries to uncover what he loves. What the worth is in something.